Zoom misbehavior?

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Mikerosen
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Zoom misbehavior?

Post by Mikerosen »

I'm having two problems with the zoom functions. First, if I use the ⌘F, my expectation is that the drawing will be zoomed to fit in the viewing area. (This is how DrawingBoard worked.) RC, however, seems to center the view on the upper left corner of the drawing, and most of the drawing is out of sight. In addition, the scroll bar is all the way to the right, and I can't even scroll to the hidden part of the drawing. The only way I can see the whole drawing is ⌘F, followed by ⌘-, which recenters it at a reduced size. Then, ⌘+ will enlarge it.

Second, when I use the magnifying glass tool, I expect that when I click/hold/drag around a portion of the drawing, that portion will be enlarged and centered on the screen. Again, not so. It gives me an enlarged view of part of the drawing, but NOT the part I selected. Oddly enough, AFTER this has happened, using the magnifying tool on part of that enlarged drawing works correctly, enlarging and centering on my selection.

Is this a problem with the program, or another case of me not understanding how it works?
Mike Rosen
Seattle, WA, USA

Mac OS Ventura 13.1, iOS 11.4.1 on iPad Pro
Eric Pousse
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Joined: Sat Dec 03, 2011 12:31 pm
Location: Tours - France

Re: Zoom misbehavior?

Post by Eric Pousse »

Bonjour Mike,

Perhaps, it is again wrong word.
⌘F displays all the drawing (or printing) area in the window.
If some objects are outside this area, they can be outside the window after the command ⌘F.
Shift ⌘F displays all visible objects in the window even if they are outside the drawing or printing area.
And the zoom tool can not be used outside the drawing (or printing) area.
If you do that, the result is wrong.
Therefore, you have probably some objects outside the drawing area.

Thanks.
Eric Pousse
debenriver
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Re: Zoom misbehavior?

Post by debenriver »

Hi Mike

With RC (and most other Mac based 2D CAD programs) you really do have to set your drawing size as a starting point. And draw at a scale so that everything will fit on the drawing. Otherwise you are going to get printing, scaling and zooming difficulties.

The drawing size is not the same as the paper size, although often for practical purposes it is easier/better to make it so. Or as we have discussed in other threads, make the paper size related to the drawing size in a logical way in terms of scale and in terms of the ratio of the sides of the paper – easy with ISO A-series and B-series paper sizes; rather more complicated with US paper sizes which are not so logically related to each other.

With a CAD program (unlike say a word processor) you don't often want to make a drawing that extends over several pages because that doesn't print out very well, because of printer margins and so forth. So there really isn't any reason not to make your paper size the same as your drawing size most of the time.

In ClarisCad and it's predecessors for example, it simply wasn't possible to draw outside the drawing size, nor could you move objects outside the drawing boundaries. This is akin to drawing manually on a drawing board – you simply physically couldn't draw beyond the edge of the paper/drawing board.

With RC you can draw beyond the drawing and you can place objects outside the drawing, but these items do not form part of the drawing. Think more of it like an area of scrap paper to doodle on, store bits of drawing on etc – but don't think of it at part of the drawing itself.

Hence the two separate zoom functions: ⌘F to zoom the drawing to fill the screen; ⇧⌘F to zoom everything you have drawn, both inside and outside the drawing, to fill the screen.

As I have mentioned before, I am in the habit of making my drawings with a width of 1.25* the paper size while I am working on them, which gives me the extra space on the right hand side so that my tools are not over the top of stuff drawn on the far right of the drawing itself, and I can always scroll to the far right of the drawing, and I have a bit of doodling space. This way, I get some extra space, and all the zoom and scrolling functions work properly because everything is inside the drawing. When I am done, I revert to the drawing width the same as the paper width and throw away anything that is then outside the drawing. There's nothing magic about 1.25* of course – it could be any multiple – that's just what I use for some reason :D

Cheers -- George
Mikerosen
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Re: Zoom misbehavior?

Post by Mikerosen »

OK, we obviously have a different view, here.

I have my scale at 1/12, so 1" = 1 foot.
I have my drawing size (page setup) at landscape, 10 inches wide, 8 inches high, and show page bounds in Preferences. This drawing size rectangle is in the upper left corner of my screen.

I draw a rectangle on the screen, 120 inches by 96 inches. This is to the right and slightly below the drawing size rectangle.

The rectangle is exactly the same size as the the page bounds, just as it should be. (10" = 10' = 120")

I convert the rectangle to lines, and draw a parallel in from each side, 6". This gives me a small box in each corner.

Now, I want to zoom in on one of those 6" x 6" boxes, so I can do some detail work. I choose the magnifying glass tool, and click/drag around one corner. My expectation is that the area I selected (including that square) will be expanded to the size of my screen, centered on the screen.

Instead, the drawing goes - I don't know where. It's expanded so much, that I no longer can see any part of it on the screen. I have to use ⌘ Shift F to bring it back to the screen, and my rectangle is now enlarged to the screen boundaries. But I still can't zoom in on that corner.

I'm sorry, but either I'm stupid, or this is wrong.
Mike Rosen
Seattle, WA, USA

Mac OS Ventura 13.1, iOS 11.4.1 on iPad Pro
debenriver
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Re: Zoom misbehavior?

Post by debenriver »

If I read your post correctly, you set up a drawing size of 10" x 8" and a paper size of 10" x 8" – all good!

But then instead of drawing within your "drawing size rectangle" you drew elsewhere – outside the drawing. This is like having your of paper all set up on your drawing board, but actually doing the drawing on another scrap of paper somewhere else, maybe on the office desk.

Under these circumstances, the zoom functions will not work properly because they are centred around what you have instructed them is the drawing area (the drawing size). So as far as they are concerned your objects aren't on the drawing. The only zoom that will really work properly for objects that aren't on the drawing is ⇧⌘F, which zooms everything, inside the drawing or outside it.

The better way to work would be to set up your page exactly as you have done and then either:

a) Use the zoom bottom left of your screen to set a magnification factor so that your blank page comfortably fills the screen – on my 11" air book this is a magnification of 100.

Or

b) do ⌘F so the the blank page fills the height of the screen, which on my air book is a somewhat greater magnification than 100.

Then draw your rectangle WITHIN the drawing, convert to lines, draw you parallels etc and when you use the magnifying glass for one of the corner boxes it will behave exactly as it should.

To return to look at the drawing as a whole hit ⌘F

Or use ⌘+ or ⌘- (or the zoom box bottom left) to change the magnification as you want to/need to as you draw.

Provided you draw inside your drawing scroll bars and zoom should work fine. If you draw outside the drawing things will work rather unexpectedly.

I just did all this with the rectangle/drawing size/page setup/scale you describe and it all works fine.

Draw everything inside the drawing. Use magnification to stay working within the drawing. Forget the area outside the drawing. Don't draw anything there. It really doesn't exist! :D

Hope this helps!

George
Eric Pousse
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Re: Zoom misbehavior?

Post by Eric Pousse »

Mike,

I have made a little video on which you see the drawing area with the lines and what happens when I zoom in.
Here : http://adx-online.com/20140917-Record.mov

In iPocket Draw, there is not this concept of drawing area.
You can draw and zoom anywhere.

Perhaps, I have to do the same in RealCADD.

Remember that you can move the drawing area with the hand tool and key option down.
Eric Pousse
Mikerosen
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Re: Zoom misbehavior?

Post by Mikerosen »

George,
That's the trick. I didn't realize that I was drawing somewhere else! Again, I was used to DB not restricting the page location. I have a 27" iMac, so it seemed silly to think of that little rectangle in the corner as being the active drawing area.

Eric,
Thanks for that video. Yes, I think the "no drawing area" concept is good, as long as you can then get it to print, properly. (I haven't tried printing from iPD. I'll experiment with that, as well.)

Moving the drawing area is a neat trick too. Request: could you make that line display as a lighter, dotted line, rather than the same as the drawing lines?

Thanks to you both for sticking with me, again!

EDIT: As a follow-up, I went back to iPD, to see how the print worked from there. I don't have an Air-print printer, so I need to use a longer process. I export the drawing as a jpg, and mail it to myself. From the email, I copy the drawing to the clipboard, and open PrinterPro. In that program, I paste from the clipboard, and I can then print. It's a procedure, but the point is, it works! The drawing, regardless of scale or anything else, fits on the page.

A similar paradigm for RealCADD would be great!
Mike Rosen
Seattle, WA, USA

Mac OS Ventura 13.1, iOS 11.4.1 on iPad Pro
Eric Pousse
Posts: 1064
Joined: Sat Dec 03, 2011 12:31 pm
Location: Tours - France

Re: Zoom misbehavior?

Post by Eric Pousse »

Mike,

I have updated the new beta version to allow to zoom outside the drawing area.
Eric Pousse
Mikerosen
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Re: Zoom misbehavior?

Post by Mikerosen »

Merci, Eric. I will try it out!
Mike Rosen
Seattle, WA, USA

Mac OS Ventura 13.1, iOS 11.4.1 on iPad Pro
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